Thursday, March 23, 2006

A Special Weekly Bottom One . . . Or Two . . .

You know, I had my weekly Bottom One (formerly the Tuesday Bottom One, but I'm a little less than reliable about that) all picked out and ready to go. And then a new loser swooped in - literally swooped - and stole the prize from the story I had completed.

Who was that masked man, that champion of all things feeding from the bottom?

His name? Sheen. Charlie Sheen.

The hooker-loving son of Martin Sheen, who in the 80s seemed to be one of Hollywood's most promising young actors (WALL STREET, PLATOON) and who now stars on a sitcom playing in an infinite loop on American Airlines flights between Chicago and Los Angeles, decided to shoot his mouth off today. And believe you me, when a guy from Heidi Fleiss' little black book decides to shoot his mouth off, I listen. Boy, do I ever.

Yeah. Anyway, Charlie's decided that he's not at all satisfied with our government's description of the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. Nope. No, sir. So, after a few shots of Cuervo and a couple of lines of stunt powder from the prop room of the MIAMI VICE movie, he's apparently perused the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory web sites, and decided that our government is deluding us.

The long and the short of Charlie's thesis? Nineteen terrorists didn't get on four commercial jets with box cutters and whatnot. They didn't ram those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania.

Nope. Instead, those were planned demolitions, undertaken by the US GOV to give a "Pearl Harbor" moment to justify war in Afghanistan, and then war in Iraq.

Aw, hell. I can't do this justice on my own. Let's hear from Chuckie Sheen himself. Here he is on the ALEX JONES SHOW on GCN Radio Network. By the way, the show referred to Charlie as having "joined a growing army of other highly credible public figures in questioning the official story of 9/11 and calling for a new independent investigation of the attack and the circumstances surrounding it."

Heh. I'll leave that one alone. Too easy. Wouldn't feel good about it. I do, however, invite everyone to remember Charlie's movies TERMINAL VELOCITY, THE CHASE, and THE THREE MUSKETEERS (yes, the one with that obnoxious "All For Love" song by Sting, Brian Adams, and some other formerly cool rock star).

Sorry. Moving right along. Here's Charlie himself:

"It seems to me like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75% of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory. It raises a lot of questions."

And again:

"It feels like from the people I talk to in and around my circles, it seems like the worm is turning."

"I was up early and we were gonna do a pre-shoot on Spin City, the show I used to do, I was watching the news and the north tower was burning. I saw the south tower hit live, that famous wide shot where it disappears behind the building and then we see the tremendous fireball.

"There was a feeling, it just didn't look any commercial jetliner I've flown on any time in my life and then when the buildings came down later on that day I said to my brother 'call me insane, but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition'?"

As opposed to all those other buildings struck by planes that you've seen come down? Sorry. Taking this seriously. I'll let Alex Jones, host of the show, explain further:

Sheen said that most people's gut instinct, that the buildings had been deliberately imploded, was washed away by the incessant flood of the official version of events from day one.

Sheen questioned the plausibility of a fireballs traveling 1100 feet down an elevator shaft and causing damage to the lobbies of the towers as seen in video footage, especially when contrasted with eyewitness accounts of bombs and explosions in the basement levels of the buildings.

Regarding building 7, which wasn't hit by a plane, Sheen highlighted the use of the term "pull," a demolition industry term for pulling the outer walls of the building towards the center in an implosion, as was used by Larry Silverstein in a September 2002 PBS documentary when he said that the decision to "pull" building 7 was made before its collapse. This technique ensures the building collapses in its own footprint and can clearly be seen during the collapse of building 7 with the classic 'crimp' being visible.

The highly suspicious collapse of building 7 and the twin towers has previously been put under the spotlight by physics Professor Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories, the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center towers.

"The term 'pull' is as common to the demolition world as 'action and 'cut' are to the movie world," said Sheen.

Sheen referenced firefighters in the buildings who were eyewitnesses to demolition style implosions and bombs.

"This is not you or I watching the videos and speculating on what we saw, these are gentlemen inside the buildings at the very point of collapse.

"If there's a problem with building 7 then there's a problem with the whole thing," said Sheen.OK, quick, let's have a show of hands. Who thinks that this will eventually culminate in some ludicrous Bush-centric conspiracy proven by the fact that our Prez continued to read to grade schoolers after hearing the First Tower had been hit?

Yeah, you're pretty much right. Sigh. Here we go.

Sheen then questioned President Bush's actions on 9/11 and his location at the Booker Elementary School in Florida. Once Andy Card had whispered to Bush that America was under attack why didn't the secret service immediately whisk Bush away to a secret location?

By remaining at a location where it was publicly known the President would be before 9/11, he was not only putting his own life in danger, but the lives of hundreds of schoolchildren. That is unless the government knew for sure what the targets were beforehand and that President Bush wasn't one of them.

"It seems to me that upon the revelation of that news that the secret service would grab the President as if he was on fire and remove him from that room," said Sheen.

The question of how Bush saw the first plane hit the north tower, when no live footage of that incident was carried, an assertion that Bush repeated twice, was also put under the spotlight.

"I guess one of the perks of being President is that you get access to TV channels that don't exist in the known universe," said Sheen.

"It might lead you to believe that he'd seen similar images in some type of rehearsal as it were, I don't know."OK, look, I'm not going to keep going with this. It's already too long. It's already too ridiculous. There is more. He brings in the fact that we've never seen actual footage of the one plane striking the Pentagon. He calls 9/11 not the Zapruder Film, but the "Zapruder Film Festival." And so on.

It's exhausting really. If you must read more, here it is:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/200306charliesheen.htm

Our Man in LA honestly doesn't know quite how to react to all this. On the one hand, I'm tempted to suggest that Charlie stick to acting. On the other hand, then I would be forced to joke that such a move would require him to return to acting.

Now I grant you that just because Charlie is a sitcom star with a checkered background and no real expertise in the news or political arena, it doesn't mean that he's wrong about this. He might be right. Any number of celebrities could be right about what happened that day.

So come back tomorrow, we'll have the rest of the cast of TWO AND A HALF MEN on Our Man in LA to talk about their conspiracy theories re: 9/11. And next week, the cast and crew of YES, DEAR will discuss the Kennedy Assassination. Grassy knowl indeed!

Sigh. Yes, I'm kidding. But I guess if Charlie Sheen's onto something, you never know.